


Lizzie Borden Took an Axe

by Fudgyokra



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Action, Angst, Betrayal, Blood, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Jack is the world's most awful person, M/M, Rhack but not, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: Rhys had trusted him, but the thing about trust is that it was a fragile, breakable thing.





	

He was such a pretty, pretty boy when his eyes were wide like that. Before, he was clawing at his restraints with a fire that Jack had never seen in him before, but he still preferred him as he was now, when it was obvious he had given up. Hands skyward, wrists shackled, on his knees behind the glass like a test subject gone wrong.

Rhys had trusted him, but the thing about trust is that it was a fragile, breakable thing.

Throughout the building, alarms were sounding, alerting everyone to Jack’s intrusion. With the primary security team bloody and in pieces at his feet, he wasn’t particularly worried about anyone else but Rhys. That’s who he had come for, and nobody else mattered even for a second.

Rhys obviously had other ideas.

“She is nothing, sweetheart,” Jack crooned, approaching the other man’s glass prison with his weapon of choice—an old axe he’d found out by the lumber yard—propped up on his shoulder.

He lifted his gloved hand up and pulled his index and middle fingers apart to examine the blood that strung across them and dripped into the crevice. With a hard stare aimed at Rhys, he took his index finger into his mouth and lasciviously drew his mouth along it, wiping the black leather clean with his tongue and pressing the slick digit to the button that operated the glass door. It door opened with a small suctioning noise, and Rhys’s face went white.

“Yeah, I’m talking about your little girlfriend,” he said, grabbing his chin and digging his fingers into the bone, hard. He enjoyed the way Rhys grimaced, even if he was too damned stubborn to lower his gaze from Jack’s. “Don’t know _what_ you see in her.” He moved his hand to Rhys’s throat and squeezed, just long enough to see the man’s eyes roll back into his skull. When he was satisfied, he let go and returned to the main cabin again to watch him wheeze.

“Where is she?” Rhys croaked.

“She’s fine,” Jack told him, wrapping the fingers of both hands around the handle of his axe. “But I can’t say the same for you.”

“What do you mean?” Rhys asked. The betrayal in his eyes made Jack’s chest tighten, but he had already come this far.

“Let’s put it this way: You’re sixty seconds away from watching me yank your guts out through your ass.”

“But I—”

“You helped me. Yeah, I know. Sucks, doesn’t it?” Jack smiled wickedly. Behind him he heard footsteps, yet offered only a sigh. Some people just didn’t have common courtesy.

He turned around to look at the two young men who had come to subdue him, pathetically armed and looked, frankly, scared out of their wits. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?” he asked facetiously, cocking his head to the side.

Without ceremony, Jack swung the axe into the first man’s neck, watching, unamused, as it got stuck halfway through. The man collapsed to the ground in choking, gurgling pain, and his companion took a step back, the gun in his hand shaking as he shot.

The bullet merely swept across Jack’s shoulder and clanged around in Rhys’s cell for a moment until it jammed itself into the man’s leg. To Rhys’s credit, he did not scream, though Jack couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed.

He grabbed the second attacker’s arm and drove his elbow downward, cracking his dominant arm in half with a crunch. Unlike Rhys, this stranger delivered beautifully with a scream of agony like music. Jack hummed and yanked the gun out of the man’s hands. “What’s your name, kiddo?” he asked, examining the barrel with rapturous curiosity.

“Tyler,” the man choked, holding up his uninjured hand. “Don’t shoot. Please, god, don’t shoot. I promise I—I’ll give you anything.”

“Give me the key to his chains,” Jack ordered, jerking a thumb toward Rhys.

“They’re—I, I don’t have them, I just—”

Already bored, Jack yanked Tyler’s head back and jammed the muzzle of the gun toward the back of his throat. “If you don’t have them, you’re wasting my goddamn time.”

Though Tyler had begun to gurgle something, the shot that exploded out of the back of his head did the talking for him. Jack let the body slump to the ground and regarded the other guard, who was flapping his hand uselessly against the linoleum floor. “Fuck, you’re still alive?” Jack asked, almost impressed. Almost.

He tightened his hands around the axe’s handle again and pulled it out of the man’s neck with a sticky thwacking noise, then set his foot atop his throat. He could see Rhys’s reflection in the mirror when he stepped down, cracking the tiny bones beneath him like twigs. He looked dangerously close to being sick on himself, but held up with annoying resilience.

Jack looked back at him and licked his lips. “No key, so we do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Just leave me here,” Rhys spat, trying hard not to look at the bloodbath that Jack had created upon arrival. “You fucking traitor.”

Jack knelt to Rhys’s level and got in his face. “What a filthy mouth you’ve got.”

Instead of a retort, Rhys’s chest heaved and his head dropped. It occurred to Jack that Rhys really did look heartbroken. He’d trusted him, all right, and now he was facing the consequences of his decision.

Jack stood and slammed the axe’s blade down on the chain holding Rhys’s organic arm. The links snapped apart, and Rhys drew his arm in toward his chest as though for comfort. Still, he regarded Jack with hate boiling in his eyes.

“I don’t get a thank you?” he asked with a snort.

Rhys growled something that sounded suspiciously like “go fuck yourself” and Jack put a hand on his bionic shoulder, teasing his finger along the ragged edges where metal met skin.

“Hey now,” he all but cooed, “those chains were pretty tough to break. I could just try your arm instead.”

Rhys took a breath through his nose and clenched his teeth, signaling to Jack that he’d rather lose his arm than beg for mercy. Disappointing.

Jack held the axe by the back of the blade and drove it into Rhys’s shoulder, effectively severing the limb with the tiny, inconsequential sizzles of broken machinery. He could tell from the man’s face that his nerves were still able to feel pain, but he rather admired the expression.

Immediately, as he expected, Rhys lunged for him, knocking him back onto the ground. His weapon skidding away from them both as they grappled on the bloodied floor.

“I do like a dominant man,” he said, just before Rhys’s remaining hand struck the left side of his face. “ _Ouch_ , cupcake. Y’know, violence is never the answer.”

“It’s your fault I’m here,” Rhys breathed, drawing his arm back for another punch, this time breaking Jack’s nose.

“Watch the face!” he snapped, shoving him off and crawling back toward the weapon he’d dropped. “Listen, I hate to do this, but—” Rhys went for him again, but Jack was quicker. “Tell your girlfriend I already called dibs.” He laughed, but Rhys didn’t seem to find it as funny as he did.

“You _asshole_ ,” Rhys said, his fingers twitching at his side.

Jack gestured back toward the glass cage behind them with the axe. “Sure I got you into this little mess, but don’t forget I _rescued_ you too.”

“Rescued!” Rhys cried incredulously. “I don’t know that I’d call it that!”

More footsteps were coming down the hall, and despite how much fun he’d been having, he knew they couldn’t keep arguing like this forever. When the measly security team made it to the room, it was empty.

Jack and Rhys were already scrambling through the air ducts, Rhys in front.

They made it out covered in dirt and blood alike. Jack took a deep breath of the evening air and regarded Rhys with a wide grin. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Rhys’s eyes narrowed at the same time his mouth dropped open. “Is this a game to you?”

“Life’s a game, baby,” Jack said, sticking his nose up haughtily.

With an angry howl, Rhys tackled him to the ground and began wailing on him again. “You! Huge! Fucking! Asshole!”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Jack snarled, spitting blood onto Rhys’s face. “I betrayed you for a reason, you _dick_.”

“Oh really!” Rhys hollered, throwing his hand up. “Can’t wait to hear it!”

Instead of speaking, Jack grabbed Rhys’s shirt collar and yanked him down to initiate an aggressive, blood-drawing kiss that Rhys vehemently struggled against. When they parted, Jack shoved Rhys back into the dirt and watched him touch his own lip in stunned silence.

“All right, daddy’s got places to be,” he said, looking down at him with a frown. “And if you’re smart, you won’t come looking for me.”

Rhys’s eyes lowered to the ground. “Once upon a time I might have given a damn.”

One corner of Jack’s lip curled upward. Ignoring the tiniest pang of regret that he could still feel, he stepped back and said, “Then my job here is done.” With that, he took off running, leaving Rhys behind in the dirt. Alone, and broken in more ways than one.


End file.
